faith

This sermon was based on the lectionary passage Exodus 16:2-15, where the Israelites who have just been led out of enslavement in Egypt complain that Moses has brought them there to die and how good they had it back in Egypt where there was really good stew and housing. My pastor used to call these folks the Back-to-Egypt Committee, and the narrative still seems true today.

A description from the church’s website: “One of our favorite guest preachers, Rev. Sandhya Jha, preaches on the story of Hagar and weaves it in with the story of Khadijah, the prophet Muhammad’s first wife. She invites us to stand with our Jewish and Muslim brothers and sisters, living in true community.”

I don’t know why, with all they are dealing with in Flint, Michigan, that God told me to talk to them about refugees. But that’s who God told me to talk about.

I stood there in a church full of people who had been living six months with the knowledge that their government had put lead into their drinking water and then done virtually nothing about that fact when it came to light, and I talked to them about a man named Willie whom I had just met.

Willie has lived in northern CA for 20 years. A few years ago his sister’s husband was kidnapped in El Salvador; they called him and demanded $5,000 in four days for his release. Willie, who earns very little, could only come up with $500. They killed his brother-in-law. And then Willie’s nephew. Terrified that 3-year-old Stephanie might be next, 13 members of the family escaped, traveling on tops of trains and buses. At the US border they were detained and held in refrigerator containers for 13 days without blankets, where sleeping on the floor would have caused frostbite. Willie found out they were here and gathered money for 13 greyhound tickets so all 14 of them could live in his tiny apartment. Thanks to a faith organization, they have been granted asylum status.

I also told the people at Woodside church in Flint, Michigan about One of the organizations at the Oakland Peace Center, called the Mustard Seed Project. It provides legal assistance to youth seeking refugee status in this country because if they are sent home and refuse to join the gangs and drug cartels there, they will be murdered…or worse. The attorney who runs the Mustard Seed Project came into my office straight from the courtroom one day and said, “Babies. I am literally defending babies in the courtroom. Babies who cannot even speak their own names yet are supposed to defend themselves in our court system.” She had been in court with a toddler that morning, a toddler that the US government needed to defend himself in a court of law to make the case that if he was sent back to Honduras he would be killed.

I told them that the longer I worked at the Oakland Peace Center, the more my understanding of prayer merged with what I had heard Pope Francis say not long ago: You pray for the poor, and then you feed them; that is how prayer works.

I talked about our nation’s need to repent deeply for our policies in central and south America as well as our policies in the Caribbean and throughout Africa, and that part of our prayer of repentance was to act as God would have us act to our refugee brothers and sisters who are fleeing nations whose violence we created for the profit of a handful of people who today profit far more from war than from peace.

And after we had said our amens and given our offerings and sang songs of praise, we went to the fellowship hall. And the adults talked to me about more faithful immigration policies that we could work on together, and the little children played at our feet. And we had cookies arranged carefully on trays by the church mothers, and we drank coffee and lemonade…made from bottled water.

But everything about worship and fellowship time afterwards felt so normal that it was Wednesday before I realized, every person I was talking to, every little child playing at my feet after worship, had likely absorbed so much lead into their systems that they would suffer permanent harm, from irregular brain development to memory loss to uncontrollable tremors that would emerge over time, rendering them ineligible for the work that was already so scarce in that community that had nurtured them and destroyed them in equal measures. All because their government decided to take away their clean water and replace it with dirty water and then decided not to treat it, so that the pipes corroded.

I do not know thirst like my savior knew on the cross that day. I have always had access to water to drink.

I do not know thirst like my savior knew on the cross that day. But Willie’s family did, when they were held in refrigerator containers for 13 days by our government, including that three year old girl, Stephanie. Stephanie knew what it was to thirst and suffer at the hands of a government that did not consider her human but considered her a threat. Just like Jesus her savior knew what it was to thirst and suffer at the hands of a government that did not consider him human but considered him a threat.

Our brothers and sisters in Flint did not know what it was to be thirsty. They had access to jobs, and then they didn’t. They had access to opportunity, and then they didn’t. They had access to a safe and vibrant and thriving community, and then they didn’t. Some of them knew hunger. Many of them knew humiliation. Some of them knew redlining…intimately.

But they always had water.

For three years they did not know that the water they had was poisoning them.

They did not know at first where the rashes came from as they showered. They did not know why their memory was getting worse. They did not know why they experienced tremors that stopped them from being able to work.

They sought water and were given hyssop.

It boggles my mind that in his last moments, suffering so, Jesus was still teaching us. The scripture says that he said “I am thirsty” in order to fulfil scripture. The scripture was Psalm 69, in which the psalmist famously states, “They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.”

But that psalm was not only about being thirsty. It was about being overwhelmed and hated.

1Save me, O God, for the waters have come up to my neck.

2I sink in deep mire, where there is no foothold; I have come into deep waters, and the flood sweeps over me.

4More in number than the hairs of my head are those who hate me without cause; many are those who would destroy me, my enemies who accuse me falsely. What I did not steal must I now restore?

Willie’s family had enemies. They had to flee people who extort money from the poor. Their government would not help them. They came to a country that treats foreigners as less than human.

The people of Flint had enemies. Their own government poisoned them slowly for the sake of a few dollars and did as little as possible for them. Many of Flint’s residents were both poor and Black. Their government had treated them as enemies since before they were born.

And Jesus, on the cross, with one phrase passing his cracked, dry lips, “I am thirsty,” spoke a word of solidarity with Willie’s family and the families in Flint, and a word of solidarity for us in a city where police pass around young girls instead of participating in their liberation, where city officials spend more time talking about potholes than about the growing number of homeless people and the diminishing number of Black people.

When Jesus tells the crowd, “I am thirsty,” he hearkens back to the ancestors who had borne so much suffering that they wanted to give up. He let them know that he understood that feeling, that he felt it too. That our Lord and Savior does not condemn our fatigue but feels it with us might be scary to some, but to me it is immensely comforting, as my own South Asian community along with our Arab American brothers and sisters fear attacks in the streets because of our government’s barely veiled threats on Muslim lives in a nation that cannot tell Christian from Muslim from Sikh from Hindu when all they see is Brown. I do not know how to reconcile myself to living in a country where at any point someone could beat up by Indian father or kill him because they hate brown people and pretend it is about religion. Sometimes I am overwhelmed by how many enemies we have. And I know Jesus knows that feeling.

With that simple phrase, “I am thirsty,” Jesus hearkens to the plea of the Psalmist:

Do not hide your face from your servant, for I am in distress—make haste to answer me.

18Draw near to me, redeem me, set me free because of my enemies.

19You know the insults I receive, and my shame and dishonor; my foes are all known to you.

20Insults have broken my heart, so that I am in despair. I looked for pity, but there was none; and for comforters, but I found none.

21They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me vinegar to drink.

In that barely whispered phrase, “I am thirsty,” Jesus stands with Willie’s family who knew literal thirst but also knew what it meant to thirst for basic human dignity, to thirst for freedom from fear, to thirst for a place where children can grow up. In that plea, “I am thirsty,” Jesus stands with the people of Flint who did not even know they were thirsting for clean water and also for a time when their best and brightest did not have to dedicate all of their energy to campaigns of resistance and fights for basic rights.

When all he can utter, hanging from the cross and suffering, is “I am thirsty,” Jesus stands with the indigenous peoples, the Water Protectors in North Dakota who proclaim “Mni wiconi,” “Water is life” even when their homes are taken from them and their people are arrested for protecting the water for all of us. Jesus, like the psalmist he quotes, thirsts for a time when the world will be made right.

He thirsts for a time when this country is liberated from its founding sins of conquest of land, attempted genocide of indigenous people and the dehumanizing and destructive enslavement of Black people for profit, sins that have not disappeared but have evolved and adapted as only evil can.

Jesus feels the despair creeping in, the seemingly unwinnable fight and lets us know that our despair is reasonable, that our enemies are real.

But he also quotes the psalm because he knows that despair is not the end of the story.

30I will praise the name of God with a song; I will magnify him with thanksgiving.

32Let the oppressed see it and be glad; you who seek God, let your hearts revive.

33For the Lord hears the needy, and does not despise his own that are in bonds.

35For God will save Zion and rebuild the cities of Judah; and his servants shall live there and possess it;

36the children of his servants shall inherit it, and those who love his name shall live in it.

My brothers and sisters, Jesus still thirsts for the prisoners to be freed, for strangers to be welcomed because we were all strangers in Egypt once. Jesus still thirsts for a world where love is love and Black lives matter. Jesus still thirsts for a world where our governments partner with us in building a Beloved Community here on earth, where there is neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, slave nor free.

Do you thirst with Jesus?

Do you seek to rid the world of hyssop and replace it with pure, thirst quenching water?

Do you want to build a Beloved Community where all of God’s children are welcome and equal and thriving?

Then in the name of our thirsting Lord and Savior, let us be about God’s work until all of God’s children’s thirst is quenched.

NOTE: I was asked to submit a piece to a powerful advent devotional called #F***ThisS*** and was assigned this title and passage from Matthew. The clergy who launched it feel a sense of urgency in this moment that I also feel, and they have incorporated strong language to convey that urgency much as the prophets in the Hebrew Bible did in the parlance of their own time. The situation in which we find ourselves, with Black and Brown and poor people’s lives and labor treated as disposable or exploitable or turned into commodities to be bought and sold, is far more dire than the language in this piece. That said, for a PG version of this online devotional, seek the hashtag #RendTheHeavens instead. With deep gratitude to the Rev. Tuhina Rasche for inviting me to be part of this.

“SHUT THE F*** UP.”

And he will send out his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds, from one end of heaven to the other. –Matthew 24:31, NRSV

At Thanksgiving, the Sherwood Forest ring tone kept sounding, as if the horns were calling us to a fox hunt.

It was one person’s text message ringtone, another’s voicemail ringtone, and a third person’s work phone ring tone.

I sat across from a man who voted for Trump because he was tired of corruption, and who wanted to be protected from people who look like my father.

I heard those quiet, awkward comments knowing that a good family friend, a well-educated Hindu woman, voted for Trump for the same reasons, seemingly not concerned that the people threatening the lives of Muslims can’t tell the difference between Sikh, Hindu, Muslim or Christian; they just see Brown.

It seemed like a good reason to sound the alarm.

Now there was a great wind, so strong that it was splitting mountains and breaking rocks in pieces before the Lord, but the Lord was not in the wind; and after the wind an earthquake, but the Lord was not in the earthquake; (1 Kings 9:11-12a, NRSV)

There is so much noise right now.

There is noise about the theater and illegal votes and illegal people and terrorist skittles and protecting people through stop and frisk. Noise about Dick Cheney, Darth Vader and Satan as role models for power. Noise about “economic nationalism” as opposed to “white nationalism.”

Noise that drowns out the murder of William Sims by white supremacists. Noise that drowns out the death threats sent cowardly and anonymously to mosques across the country. Noise that drowns out the barricades being built by police to stop emergency vehicles from entering Sioux territory.

and after the earthquake a fire, but the Lord was not in the fire; and after the fire a sound of sheer silence. When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle and went out and stood at the entrance of the cave. (1 Kings 9:12b-13a)

But we can’t hear it or respond to it unless we stop listening to the wind and the earthquake and the fire, the tale told by an idiot signifying nothing.

We can’t hear it as long as we generate more noise.

We may be the elect from the four winds, or we may not. But we have a role to play in these coming days as God ushers in the birth of a baby born under the eyes of a brutal ruler controlled by a foreign empire. And we need to shut out the din around us and shut down the din inside us to hear the trumpets call.

I’m in my second day of a five day fast with night janitors for a cause most people don’t even realize is a cause: many immigrant women cleaning buildings across our country live in fear of sexual assault by predatory managers who know they are working alone and need to keep their jobs. It’s stuff so sinister you can picture one of those cartoon villains twisting his moustache as he plans the act. But it is real. It is happening to people who clean buildings we or our family members work in. And finally, despite all the risks, some women stepped forward to speak the truth about their experiences and change things for their sisters.

I first learned about this hidden crisis during a screening of the Frontline film Rape on the Night Shift a couple of weeks ago at the state building in Oakland. You can watch the whole thing online and I dare you not to cry. What moved me even more than the film, though, was listening to the stories of women who had to find the courage to risk their jobs and means of supporting their families to do what was right for themselves and for other women at risk. What struck me in particular that day was a young woman whose mother is part of the campaign. She said something along the lines of “there are certain things you never expect to talk about with your mother: sex, rape, violence at work.” She then expressed how proud she was of her mother and how proud she was to stand with her. I was deeply moved.

Last week, one of the organizers of the film told me that the workers would be fasting Monday through Friday of this week, demanding that Governor Brown follow his moral compass and sign AB 1978 into law. According to the United Service Workers West,

Female janitors face unique risk of sexual harassment and assault as their jobs often require working alone at night in empty buildings, an epidemic PBS Frontline profiled in “Rape on the Night Shift,” and in a report from UC Berkeley earlier this year: “Perfect Storm: How Supervisors Get Away with Sexually Harassing Workers Who Work Alone at Night.”

AB 1978, the Property Services Worker Protection Act would enhance the Department of Industrial Relations’ authority to prevent assault by requiring employer training and prevention plans, establishing a hotline for victims, and toughening enforcement for employers who leave workers at risk.

As janitor and activist Maria Gonzalez said,

“I was sexually assaulted at work, twice. The employer transferred the supervisor and me to the same building. With nowhere to go, I felt trapped. As survivors, we have stepped out of the shadows to fight back against rape and exploitation, because we know the bosses count on our silence to keep us vulnerable. Ya Basta! We built a movement that can’t be stopped because more and more women are coming forward to support each other and create a safe workplace. Now Governor Brown must do his part and sign AB 1978, because no woman should ever be afraid to go to work.”

I heard stories like this from the women who were fasting when I met them yesterday. One woman was assaulted, took self-defense lessons, fought off her boss with a letter opener when he attacked her again, and was fired for her efforts. Other women were assaulted, forced to do things against their will, and raped. And they said they were glad to be doing this, that they had released their fear, that they were proud to be doing this for the women who follow them into these workplaces. They were excited to be fasting.

There is something about workers fasting that hits me at my core as a person of faith as well as an activist. At a rally yesterday, a labor organizer announced that the workers would be staging a hunger strike.

But I met the workers. They were fasting. It’s a different thing, which is why I was moved to join them in their fast as soon as I heard they were planning it.

Fasting has strong, ancient roots. Fasting is a critical part of the Christian faith (and Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim, and Jewish among others) for spiritual as well as sometimes justice reasons. But even when justice is part of it, fasting involves connecting to something bigger than oneself (and in this case praying for divine intervention to evoke right action by our state’s elected leader).

Fasting can be about community, even when it is a solitary practice. Several of the women fasting this week are Catholic, like Governor Brown. I saw some of them holding rosaries as they received a blessing from Rabbi Rothbaum yesterday. I saw some of them reading Catholic devotionals in Spanish. And I heard one of them say “Having religious leaders visit us and pray with us reminds me that we are not just activists. We are tools being used by God to make the world better.” The ten women fasting will be community for each other, and I hope that knowing I am fasting with them will remind them that there is a larger community supporting them. But most importantly, I hope that their spiritual act will remind their and my governor that our shared ties of faith call us to treat God’s children with deep compassion and dignity, and that our shared faith does not allow evil to continue undisrupted.

When the workers shout “¡Ya basta!” it is a prayer. It is the prayer of our God who will not tolerate sexual violence. And it is God’s own prayer put into action by faithful women, as has happened for millenia: faithful women have put hands and feet to God’s prayers.

I believe the saint Teresa of Avila is saying to the women fasting at the Capitol today, “Christ has no body now but yours. No hands, no feet on earth but yours. Yours are the eyes through which he looks compassion on this world. Yours are the feet with which he walks to do good. Yours are the hands through which he blesses all the world. Yours are the hands, yours are the feet, yours are the eyes, you are his body. Christ has no body now on earth but yours.”

And the workers I met, who have survived sexual violence in the workplace, are serving as Christ’s hands and feet, answering God’s “¡Ya basta!” prayer as loudly as God would wish.

If you live in California, please contact Governor Brown and ask him to sign AB 1978 today to end rape on the night shift: (916) 445-2841.